The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Friedrich Engels

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781839761515
• eBook ISBN:
  9781839761522
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Communisme, post-communisme et socialisme

In this provocative and now-classic work, Friedrich Engels explores the interrelated development of the family and the state from ancient society to the Victorian era. Drawing on new anthropological theories of his time, Engels argued that matriarchal communal societies had been overthrown by class society and its emphasis on private, not communal, property and monogamous, rather than polygamous, sexual organization. This historical development, Engels argued, constituted "the world-historic defeat of the female sex."

A masterclass in the application of materialist thought to history and anthropology, and touching on love, monogamy, property, and the development of the human, this landmark work is still foundational in Marxist and socialist feminist theory.

Index

Adams, Robert xlii

adultery 45, 63, 67, 69–70, 77–78, 141

Æschylus

Oresteia 8–10

The Suppliants 105

Africa xli, 28

Agassiz, Louis 50–51

agriculture 22, 24–25, 26, 151, 157, 162–63

alienation xiv

American Indians xx, xxix, 12–16, 21, 53–54, 68, 146–47

brain size 24

chiefly authority xl–xli

collectives xxxv–xxxviii

consanguinity 27–30, 42

incest 34

inheritance 55–56

marriage 47–49

middle stage of barbarism 22–23, 160–61

see also Iroquois, the

animal marriage 34

animal societies 31–33

animals, domestication of 22, 23–24, 26, 53, 161–62

anthropoid apes 31–32, 33–34

anthropology xxi, 16–17

Aragon 51–52, 53

Aristophanes 63

artists 162

Aryans 23–24, 58, 103, 158, 162

Athenian State, the 109–20, 171

causes of emergence 109–10

citizens rights 110, 117

civil law 110

civil rights 118

classes and class divisions 110–11, 116

constitution 110–11, 115–16

constitution of Cleisthenes 117–18

council 118

development of 114–20

exploitation 115

growth of money economy 111–14

military organization 116

mode of production 113

mortgages 111–12

naval power 114–15

police force 119

political rights 116

power of the nobility 111

private ownership 116

slaves 119

tribes 118

Athens 63–64, 77, 99–103, 179

Australia xliin, 21, 28, 40, 42–45, 49

Australopithecus 20n

authority xxxi–xxxii

autonomy xxxvii

Aztecs xli, xliv, 107n

Bachofen,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Editor’s Note
• Foreword
• Introduction: Engels and the History of Women’s Oppression by Eleanor Burke Leacock
• The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Fourth Edition
• I. Stages of Prehistoric Culture
• II. The Family
• III. The Iroquois Gens
• IV. The Greek Gens
• V. The Rise of the Athenian State
• VI. The Gens and the State in Rome
• VII. The Gens among Celts and Germans
• VIII. The Formation of the State among the Germans
• IX. Barbarism and Civilization
• Appendix: A Recently Discovered Case of Group Marriage
• Notes
• Index